On Creativity and Digital Smarts

Personally, the “Did You Know 3.0” video terrified me. I see the changes happening in the world today and I slowly realize that it will be my responsibility to prepare my students for this world that never stops changing and never stays still. The internet, with its estimated 1 billion machines, is reducing the world to a smaller and smaller place. We have to prepare our students for a more globalized world. Our students will be growing up in a world in which taking a trip overseas consists of opening up a laptop and clicking a link.

I was raised in a household in which World Book Encyclopedias were the final word in facts. If it wasn’t in World Book, it wasn’t true. Today, kids are growing up in the era of Google. Instead of looking up a fact in a two ton book, they are surfing through an endless amount of information in no time flat. This fact worries me. When I was young, if there was no World Book answer to a question, I had to search; Go to the library, ask my instructors, experiment to find an answer. Kids today do none of this. I am afraid that this availability of resources, while a good thing, makes answers come a bit too easily for young people. Nowhere in the Google culture do they learn that they sometimes have to work for answers. This granting of instant gratification fails to teach work ethic and leaves them absolutely helpless if (God forbid) their internet is down. It also could hinder their creativity.

Sir Ken Robinson has a few things to say on the subject of creativity. My fear is that the “information age” is actually hindering the creativity of our students as it robs them of their critical thinking skills. While it can be a blessing in small doses, the age of instant answers takes away from the ideas which Sir Robinson wants to instill. He compares the education system to strip mines. In this type of mine, everything in an area is destroyed for the sake of mining one substance. Sir Robinson seems to suggest that the “substance” being mined is test scores. These scores are a number by which we measure the success of a child, and it does seem as if all creativity is being crushed for the sake of learning math and science.

Another excellent point brought up is that of the fear of being wrong. From our youth, we have been reprimanded, scoffed at, and penalized for making mistakes. We are classically conditioned to live in constant fear of being wrong because of the judgment that is sure to follow. He speaks of how he admires a child’s lack of such inhibitions. As adults, we would rather avoid doing or saying anything than saying something and being wrong. The terrifying question: “what if I’m wrong?” looms over us and paralyzes us to the point that we are afraid to have new and original ideas for fear they might not work out.

In the video with Vicki Davis, I saw a remarkable classroom technique, but I failed to see what useful skills were being learned. I fail to see the need to exist in a virtual world like the OpenSim software her students were using. I will be the first to admit that I am a skeptic about some of the technology seen here. As an English major and lover of literature, I will confess that I feel a bit old-fashioned when I see all of these technologies. I always felt more comfortable with a book in my hands. While I know that many students don’t learn that way, I do feel like I was watching a tutorial on how to play “The Sims.”

I can appreciate the idea of integrating technologies with the material, but I feel as if the technology being used is overshadowing the information being learned. It seems to me like a really flashy way of teaching material that could be taught with less of an entertainment factor. I don’t feel like a high school student needs a Twitter account, or an online avatar. Of course, I could just be jealous that I didn’t have such things back in my day.

Personal opinions aside, Ms. Davis emphasizes something that I feel like I must commend her for. She has the ability to step aside and allow students to learn for themselves as well as teach one another. This, I feel, is an incredibly effective method of teaching which also encourages more interaction between the students in problem solving and collaboration. While the technologies shown here are highly effective ways of teaching these skills, they were taught to students long before computers, and I just fail to see why it is necessary for us to use special software simply because we are teaching for the future. Again, perhaps this is my old-fashioned nature talking, and I hope that continuing in this EDM310 course can change my mind on this if a change of mind is needed.